Haunt Me
by Kristybelle
Summary: An in-between one shot between "Reticence" and "Conviction." Part of Violet wanted to run from him, to run from this, this breakdown she had known was coming. She had felt the rumbling of it, like she had been standing on the railroad track with a freight train bearing down on her from miles away.


**Title: ** Haunt Me

**Rating: **M

**Spoilers: **set after Afterbirth

**Important Info: **This is set in the same universe as my first Violate fanfiction: Reticence. You don't have to read it to enjoy this story, but you should. Because I like reviews. :/ If you don't want to read Reticence, here is all you need to know: Violet/Travis and Tate/Hayden happened. Violet and Tate reconciled. That's about it, really.

**Haunt Me**

Boredom was something you couldn't avoid in the Murder House.

There were only so many card games and books and songs. When Violet tired of the sparse entertainment the ghosts gathered on Halloween like squirrels preparing for the winter, she people-watched. Or rather, ghost-watched.

It was easy to become unknown for Violet, to fade away into the background. Maybe because she had always liked being a wall flower.

It could be nice to go unnoticed. It could be nice to be alone.

Violet had forgiven Tate almost three years ago, and she could count on one hand the nights they had spent apart since. She could count on one finger.

A few months after they'd reconciled, Violet had left. She'd remained hidden for him, her family, everyone around her. She'd spent the night to herself, thinking and listening to music and walking lap after lap in the backyard.

The next day, Tate had been frantic, crying, pleading with her to tell him what happened, what was wrong.

She couldn't speak. She couldn't tell him that she had been mulling over her decisions, wandering around the house wondering if forgiveness was the right step. She didn't doubt that she was happier. She didn't doubt that she was in love. She just doubted her own sanity. She wondered if she could live with her decision.

As it turned out, she had been able to. The draw and wonder of being with Tate had overridden her churning thoughts, had overridden her knowledge of his darkness and violence toward her family and the world at large. At the end of that long, thoughtful day, she still wanted to be his.

So she appeared again to Tate as he sat brooding on her bed, and because he wouldn't take "I don't know" for an answer, she finally told him that she had only wanted some time alone to think.

He'd crushed her in his arms and he was shaking all over.

Tate hadn't said what Violet had known he'd wanted to say, but she knew. She knew he had been afraid.

He'd begged her to promise to never leave him again, and of course, she had promised, staring down into those black eyes as if she was standing at the edge of an abyss.

But she was thinking that they had broken promises to each other before.

Now, Violet only took a few brief hours, here and there. While Tate was sleeping, or in a session with Ben. She snuck away, hid herself for a couple of hours, and watched.

Moira doing housework, alone, would sometimes shift from young to old and back again, her skin tightening and loosening, her red hair dulling and glowing, her voice as she hummed first low and wise and then lilting and sweet like a bird's song.

The twins, speaking to each other in low, hushed tones, passing back and forth an old Playboy magazine.

More than once, Hayden crying softly at the gazebo, her head in her hands, long red hair flowing through her fingertips, and Violet's father watching from the back steps with his head tilted and a glass of Scotch that he never drank from in his hand.

Today, the sights were a little less complicated. Travis, shirt off, bronze skin gleaming with sweat, mowing the grass with an ancient lawn mower that sputtered and spat oil across the lawn.

Violet watched for a few moments, remembering the way his skin had felt hot and taut underneath her hands, the way his long hair had brushed her throat when he kissed her. Her face grew flushed and she grew ashamed of her thoughts, ashamed of her spying, and in her shame, she appeared there in the back yard.

As he rounded a difficult corner, he spotted her and a grin spread across his face. He threw his hand up in greeting and reached down to turn of the lawn mower. For one delicious and guilty second, Violet watched the curve of his muscular back, the way his jeans rode low on his hips.

He stood up and Violet hoped her cheeks weren't flaming red.

"Hey, there, chickadee!" He said, refreshingly cheery as always.

Violet smiled back at him, waved. "Trying to keep this place up for visitors?"

Travis shrugged. "Exercise. Something to do. What are you doing out here?"

_Besides lusting after you while my psychotic boyfriend is having a therapy session with my father, who by the way I'm pretty sure is still a little bit in love with the woman who murdered him?_ Violet shrugged, too. "Walking. Exercise," she said, and it came out in a sort of squeak.

A sweet California summer breeze rustled through the trees in the backyard and cooled Violet's cheeks, brought her back from her troubling thoughts. She chatted with Travis for a few moments, and brought him a cool glass of water before she left him to his busywork.

She trailed back inside reluctantly. She had enjoyed the warm sun on her shoulders, the small talk with Travis. It seemed like living, again, the little ins and outs of life, instead of endless days looking at the same walls, the same people repeating the same actions again and again.

When she went back into her room, Tate was waiting for her, sitting cross legged on the bed.

"How'd it go?" She asked casually, shutting the door, and when she turned around to look at him again he was standing up, looking at her.

He'd been crying, which was not unusual after his sessions with her father, but his eyes were even darker than usual.

"Where have you been?" his voice was hoarse.

"I was just roaming around, waiting for you," she said, puzzled, and reached for his hand.

He jerked away from her, exhaling a breath sharply through his nostrils. "You weren't waiting for _me_," he said, harshly, and Violet realized he was angry.

Anger was something she'd rarely experienced from Tate in their years together, and his tone pained her. "Tate, what's wrong? What happened?"

"I saw the way you looked at him, Violet! I'm not stupid, you know. I'm not so hopelessly in love with you that I don't understand." He looked wired, twitchy, his eyes unfocused.

"Tate, what are you talking about-"

"Don't patronize me!" He yelled at her, and then his eyes focused on hers and they were so black and deep she caught her breath. He moved toward her, his hands out in front of him, and Violet flinched, fear blooming in her stomach.

He stopped, then, his face changing, crumbling a bit, and he let out a low whine like a wounded dog. "I am in love with you, though, Violet," he said, and fresh tears shone in his black, black eyes.

Part of Violet wanted to run from him, to run from this, this breakdown she had known was coming. She had felt the rumbling of it, like she had been standing on the railroad track with a freight train bearing down on her from miles away.

It had been such a gradual spiral downward into depression and obsession that Violet was sick to her stomach that she hadn't fully realized it. She'd caught him a few times, over the last three years, climbing up out of the basement, his eyes shifting away from her whenever he said he had only gone down there to visit with his father. The dark circles under his eyes, the hollowness of his cheeks. The nights that'd she'd wake up and he'd be sitting up on the bed, watching her sleep. They way his black eyes followed her as she walked around her bedroom or in to the kitchen. The reverent way he touched her when they made love, too slow, too careful.

"I love you too, Tate," she said, almost whispering, hoping it was the right thing, the right words, because she loved him so even if she was afraid of him and she couldn't bear the look on his face.

He was shaking his head even as she spoke, and her heart fell. "Don't say that, Violet. Don't say that because you don't mean it. You can't. I just want..." he stopped speaking for a moment and plunged his hands into his gold curls, tugging and pulling at them, his face contorted with emotion. "I just want to be what you want, Violet!"

"You are what I want, Tate! You're the only thing I want!" She was crying now, the tears coming fast and hard because she didn't know what would happen next. She didn't know how to console him, how to stop it. The train was getting closer and closer, the tracks vibrating underneath her feet.

"I can't be what you want. I can't be...normal."

"I don't like normal things," Violet said.

Tate gave her a broken smile, and Violet hoped that repeating the words he'd said to her so many years ago would bring him back.

She walked toward him, slow as if approaching a dangerous animal. She placed her hands on either side of his face and forced him to look into her eyes.

"Stay with me, Tate," she pleaded, and placed a soft, open kiss on his mouth.

She could see him struggling, see him working for control, and she willed the good in Tate, the light in him, to come forward. But his eyes stayed black as night, and he pushed her away roughly.

"I can't," he said, his voice breaking.

"Tate, please-" She felt fear rising up in her throat, felt a kind of electricity in the air. Her skin tingled as the blond hair on her arms began to stand on end.

"He's normal," Tate said, and Violet didn't have to ask who he was talking about. "That's why I catch you staring at him, Violet. That's why you get that wistful look on your face. Not because he's good looking. Not because you want to fuck him. Although there's that, too."

He came toward her, then, and although she was afraid she didn't cringe or look away, because he was Tate. He was her Tate, light or dark, and she wanted him with her, always.

He grasped her by the shoulders and caressed her face with the back of one hand. He put his other hand on the waistband of her jeans and put it up under her shirt, and Violet's skin quaked beneath his palm as he moved over her flat stomach, her ribcage.

"I know sometimes you imagine its his hands on you instead of mine," he said, and his voice was hard, gravelly instead of the song-like lilt it had when he was telling her how beautiful she was, how much he loved her.

"Tate, I-" Violet began, and Tate clapped a big hand over her mouth, hard, and Violet felt a bloom of pain and tasted blood on her teeth.

"I know you were with him," he said, his words frighteningly slow and calm, "that night you were away from me."

Violet wanted to shake her head, but she was afraid he might break her neck to keep her from protesting him. She was stuck on the train tracks now, her foot caught, and the bright floodlights were blinding her, the sound of the train's horn blaring in her ears.

"I looked for him that night, too. I was ashamed of it, but I looked for him because I was afraid I would find you with him but - he wasn't around. It's odd, isn't it?"

Violet didn't think it was odd at all, since most of the ghosts in the house avoided Tate like the plague whenever he was in a dark mood, and Violet could imagine the night she'd left him alone had been a particularly dark night for Tate.

She couldn't speak and even if she'd had the ability she wouldn't have spoken. This was not a Tate that she could manipulate with kind words and affection. This was her Tate, too, she loved all the parts of him, but he didn't play by her rules. He made his own game. Tate had grown up in the years that he and Violet had been apart, but he hadn't grown out of this darkness, this horror that lived inside him. It had just changed into a more mature version.

"Not so odd, really." His hand was still moving under her shirt, and he used one hand to unhook her bra and then back around to cup one breast, his thumb flicking over her nipple, already hard from fear. "I've seen you with him. The way he makes you purr like a kitten."

Tate took in a sharp breath and moved his hand from her mouth. He kissed her split lip softly, and pain/pleasure shot down Violet's spine. Tate moved his hand from her breast around to her back, leaning down to place his other arm at the crook of her knees. He lifted her, carried her to the bed, and Violet's head was spinning with fear and concern and she was ashamed to admit to herself, excitement.

Violet was attracted to the darkness.

He all but threw her down on the bed, and Violet landed like a rag doll, bouncing on the mattress. He moved down and placed his body against hers quicker than she could blink, and the warmth and weight of him hurt her heart because it felt like home. His fingers deftly unbuttoned her shirt, unzipped her jeans, undressed her until she was bare and exposed, vulnerable. He removed his own clothes and then it was skin against skin, the heat of him warming her cold blood.

Tate kissed her, hard, and it hurt her bruised and bleeding lip but she kissed him back all the same, putting her hands into his blond curls, pulling him down to her.

Tate broke away and looking up at him, Violet felt a rush of heat low in her stomach. Her bedroom light was on, illuminating his golden curls like a halo, contrasting with his black, black eyes. A smear of her bright red blood stained his full bottom lip, and she wanted to lean up and grab it between her teeth.

Before she could move, Tate leaned down to her breasts, sucking and biting just enough to chase any thought from Violet's mind. She thrashed beneath him, her hips bucking toward his involuntarily.

He pulled away, too soon, and his breathing was short and harsh. She could feel him hard and long on her upper thigh, but when she reached down he grabbed her wrists, locking her arms in place. He moved her arms above her head, and she kept them there, allowing him that control.

His hands were exploring her body again, moving over her breasts and her navel, not spending too much time in one place. Then his hand slid down between her thighs and he placed one long finger against her and she took in a sharp breath as pleasure shot through her.

His hands were soft on her skin, but he looked at her and eyes were hard, angry, glittering like black diamonds, and more fear/pleasure bloomed through Violet's body, reddening her pale skin.

"He's touched you here," Tate said flatly, his voice hoarse.

Violet froze, searching his face. There were no tears in his onyx eyes, and they were so dark she couldn't determine what emotion was flaming in them.

His eyes locked on hers, he slid his finger inside her slit, his thumb flicking across her clit unbearable slowly and she cried out, arched her back.

"I've heard you scream his name, seen you arching up beneath his hand just like this." His thumb moved across her again, more quickly this time, too quickly and he dipped two fingers inside her, curling them up just the way she liked.

"Please, Tate," she moaned, looking at him, wanting him to see that it was him she wanted.

He had shifted his gaze, was looking down at his fingers slipping in and out of her pussy, and he was so focused that he allowed her to reach down between them and fill her hands with his cock, her fingers wrapping around him, tugging him toward her.

His breath became shorter and harder and moved his hands over hers, her wetness lubricating him, and he let her guide him to her.

Just before he entered her, he froze and shoved her hands back above her head. Violet took in a deep breath, aching for him, and she opened her mouth to beg when he let out a noise in his throat. He locked eyes with her and they were still glittering black but not empty, anymore. They were shining with tears and stricken, lost, and Violet's heart seized up in her chest.

He slid inside her, filling her perfectly, and a sob shook loose from his chest.

"I've seen him inside you," he said, and tears fell down from his eyes onto her face, hot and thick, like blood.

It had been years since Violet had been with Travis, and Tate had reluctantly told her the story of when he'd inadvertently witnessed their first time. He'd told it haltingly, struggling not to convey the emotions inside him, and after he'd told the story they'd taken a nap and Violet was sure he hadn't slept, sure he was pretending to breathe slow and even, because she could feel his heart beating too rapidly against her back.

He'd told her how he'd stood up, screaming, when Travis had entered her, and now Violet understood that it wasn't over for Tate.

She'd moved past Tate's affair with Hayden, had even begun to deal with the tiny stab of jealousy she got the few times she had gone out to smoke and seen them chatting together out at the gazebo.

She saw now, looking up into Tate's angry, hurt black eyes, that every time he'd caught a glance of Violet saying hello to Travis in the hallway or watched Travis play tea party with the girls in the basement he had been raging and aching and burning inside, but he hadn't told her. He'd kept it all inside, and now it had returned, bringing darkness with it.

Violet took his face in her hands. "Punish me," she said.

For an instant, Tate stilled, trembling, and then he slipped out of her and thrust back in, hard, the head of his cock bumping her womb, making her cry out in pain and pleasure.

He rode her hard, in and out, spreading her legs so far they cramped and ached, his pubic bone crushing against her clit, and Violet came in explosive bursts like firecrackers once, twice, three times.

He buried his face into her breasts, took her skin between his teeth and left marks, left her bleeding in a trail of bites from one breast to the other.

He moved his arms around her back, sitting back and pulling her on top of him, never slipping completely out of her, and bounced her on top of him, and he was really too big for this position, it hurt her every thrust and she couldn't stop screaming and coming even though she felt as if her womb would split in twain.

His nails dug bloody crescent moons into her shoulder blades, her lower back, and they stung and burned. Just as she thought the pain would override the pleasure and she'd have to beg him to stop, he pulled out of her and flipped her over harshly onto her stomach.

Instinctively, Violet got up on all fours, arching her back like a cat, offering herself to him, and Tate wrapped one hand around her thick, dark blonde locks and made a fist, yanking her head back painfully. He put his other hand on her shoulder, his fingers digging into her pale skin, and slammed into her with a force that rocked her whole body forward.

This was another position he was really too big for, and the last time they'd tried it Violet had cried out so sharply that Tate wouldn't give her another chance to do it, didn't want to hurt her. Now, Violet was so hot and slick from her previous orgasms that the only pain came from Tate pulling her hair, craning her neck back to look at him, and his fingers bruising her bony shoulder. He felt amazing from this angle, though, felt huge inside of her, and she came again, black spots bursting across her eyes, her legs trembling and aching. She screamed out Tate's name and at this, he mercifully let go of her hair, grabbing her hip bones frantically and pulling them to him and away from him.

He froze and leaned over her, biting her shoulder so hard as he came she thought he might have hit the muscle beneath the skin, and then her knees collapsed and she went down hard on her stomach, breathing hard, her heart pounding against her breastbone.

She enjoyed the cool pillow on her face for a moment. Her body ached all over, and she felt almost instantly cold because Tate's body was not pressed against hers. Goosebumps stood up all over her body.

Then she felt Tate's mouth on the wounds he'd left on her back, her shoulders. He kissed them all, softly, and Violet's heart ached because this was her Tate, too, sweet, apologetic, gentle.

He put his mouth next to her ear and she felt his curls brushing her face.

"I love you, Violet," he whispered, and it was all right, because her bruises would heal, her body would recover, and Tate eventually would get past his jealousy and insecurity.

It was all right, because even if she didn't heal and Tate didn't get past it, they could do this, all over again. Forever.


End file.
